Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By : Morgan Evans
Book Image

Engineering Manager's Handbook

By: Morgan Evans

Overview of this book

Delightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems. This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration. By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Case for Engineering Management
5
Part 2: Engineering
9
Part 3: Managing
15
Part 4: Transitioning
19
Part 5: Long-Term Strategies

Introducing engineering team design

New engineering managers rarely have the opportunity to directly choose a team design, but regardless of where you are in your manager journey, having awareness of team design concepts can help to orient you and reveal solutions to problems. Depending on your work context and goals, team design can make a big difference in your team’s productivity and performance. To that end, let’s start by learning some of the most common software development team designs and how they operate.

Common team structures

Software development organizations structure their teams in different ways to meet organizational needs. In terms of reporting hierarchies, these are the most common approaches for team structure:

  • Functionally aligned teams are grouped by a particular skill, which may be a technology or type of work, such as an iOS development team or an infrastructure engineering team
  • Product aligned teams have members who are dedicated...